to him for awakening in me,
that the organization of society upon a new and purely scientific basis
is not only practicable, but is the only political object much worth
fighting for.

As I have said, that part of M. Comte's writings which deals with the
philosophy of physical science appeared to me to possess singularly
little value, and to show that he had but the most superficial, and
merely second-hand, knowledge of most branches of what is usually
understood by science. I do not mean by this merely to say that Comte
was behind our present knowledge, or that he was unacquainted with the
details of the science of his own day. No one could justly make such
defects cause of complaint in a philosophical writer of the past
generation. What struck me was his want of apprehension of the great
features of science; his strange mistakes as to the merits of his
scientific contemporaries; and his ludicrously erroneous notions about
the part which some of the scientific doctrines current in his time were
destined to play in the future. With these impressions in my mind, no
one will be surprised if I acknowledge that, for these sixteen years, it
has been a periodical source of irritation to me to find M. Comte put
forward as a representative of scientific thought; and to observe that
writers whose philosophy had its legitimate parent in Hume, or in
themselves, were labelled "Comtists" or "Positivists" by public writers,
even in spite of vehement protests to the contrary. It has cost Mr. Mill
hard rubbings to get that label off; and I watch Mr. Spencer, as one
regards a good man struggling with adversity, still engaged in eluding
its adhesiveness, and ready to tear away skin and all, rather than let
it stick. My own turn might come next; and, therefore, when an eminent
prelate the other day gave currency and authority to the popular
confusion, I took an opportunity of incidentally revindicating Hume's
property in the so-called "New Philosophy," and, at the same time, of
repudiating Comtism on my own behalf.[13]

The few lines devoted to Comtism in my paper on the "Physical Basis of
Life" were, in intention, strictly limited to these two purposes. But
they seem to have given more umbrage than I intended they should, to the
followers of M. Comte in this country, for some of whom, let me observe
in passing, I entertain a most unfeigned respect; and Mr. Congreve's
recent article gives expression to the displeasure which I have excited